Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All a new play by Martin Tahse, based on the novel by Allan Gurganus. Directed by Don Scardino. Scenic design by Allen Moyer. Costume design by Jane Greenwood. Lighting design by Kenneth Posner. Sound design by Peter Fitzgerald. Projection design by Wendall K. Harrington. Wig & Hair design by Paul Huntley. Makeup design by Angelina Avallone. Cast: Ellen Burstyn.Theatre: Longacre Theatre, 220 West 48th Street between Broadway and 8th AvenueRunning time: 2 hours 10 minutes with one 15 minute intermission.Audience: Appropriate for age 4 and older. Children under 4 are not permitted in the theater.Schedule: Tuesday at 7 PM, Wednesday through Saturday at 8 PM, Wednesday and Saturday at 2 PM, Sunday at 3 PMTicket price: $76.25, $66.25, and $46.25Tickets:Telecharge

There's a new battle being fought in town, and if it's not quite the Civil
War, it's close enough. The battleground is the stage of the Longacre
Theatre, and the combatants are one excellent actress (Ellen Burstyn) and a
merely okay play, Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All. Luckily, it
looks like Burstyn is the one to emerge victorious.

This isn't another Golda's Balcony, perfectly matching material and star. Martin
Tahse's stage adaptation is competent as far as competent goes, hitting most
of the major points of Allan Gurganus's best-selling 1989 novel in a little
over two hours, tightening up a few things here and there, but never
particularly justifying the play as a necessary stage entity.

That's where Burstyn comes in. The worst that can be said about her
performance is that she never exactly looks or behaves quite like a woman in
her mid-to-late-90s. The 70-year-old Burstyn, whether hobbling on a cane or
sitting in a wheelchair, often has a difficult time legitimately passing for
60! There's nothing wrong with Angelina Avallone's makeup, Paul Huntley's
wig and hair design, or Jane Greenwood's costumes - they all hit their
marks. Burstyn is just energetic enough to defeat them all.

That's something of a loss, because Lucy Marsden (the "last living veteran
of the last living veteran") needs to possess the air of a woman who has
etched into her memory everything she has seen and been told over the course
of her life. That's the conceit for the play, after all: Lucy is appearing
as a fund-raising event for her nursing home, Lanes' End, charged with
sharing her many stories with the audience.

But as soon as Burstyn begins telling Lucy's stories, any real doubts about
her suitability for the role fade away. Burstyn gets just about everything
right, down to the (important) detail of presenting those in Lucy's life not
as people here and now, but Lucy's interpretations of how they
sounded and behaved. Every one has a similar sort of voice and is defined
by gestures or stances that seem to have been conjured up by a woman with no
formal acting experience.

But because of Burstyn's consummate talent and professionalism, those
characters never suffer from a lack of feeling and definition, whether her
husband, Captain Willie "Cap" Marsden, a lecherous man tortured by memories
of his own failings during the Civil War whom she married at 15 (he was in
his early 50s), or their black servant, taken from Africa as part of the
slave trade and fated to play a major role in both the life of Lucy and her
husband. Burstyn relates Lucy's many tales with the relish of a
natural-born (not trained) storyteller ("Stories only happen to people who
can tell 'em"), from the terror of her wedding night to her son's loss of
sight in a tragic accident.

Through her stories, Lucy makes it obvious that her goal is not to detail
the real Civil War, or even the war between the sexes, though those are the
two overriding subjects of her story. Lucy is most concerned with
preserving the memory of the people, places, and events that have affected
her life by passing them on to others, who may themselves recall and relate
them, keeping them forever alive. This realization striking is the play's
most vividly theatrical moment as theatre itself, the most ephemeral of art
forms, eventually lives only in the memories or writings of those who were
there.

Tahse touches on this only slightly, but Scardino is intent on embracing a
more literal journey into Lucy's memory, using projections (nicely designed
by Wendall K. Harrington) and fancy lighting effects (courtesy of Kenneth
Posner) to establish locations and add some visual excitement. The
technique is moderately effective, but seems a bit too much - would the
people at Lanes' End pay for special lighting to depict the burning of Mama
Marsden's plantation? The concept gets a bit lost here. At least Allen
Moyer's set doesn't give into temptation; it's a cinderblock rec room that
provides a fine blank and institutional canvas on which Lucy can paint her
pictures.

But those pictures might not always be as impressive as they are here -
Tahse's play might well suffer with less-experienced performers who can't
find all the layers necessary to summarize eight or nine decades' events in
just a handful of words. As it is, the play too often threatens to grind to
a halt whenever a half-formed joke or too-obvious anecdote stays in primary
focus for too long.

But as long as Burstyn sticks with Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells
All, it's worth seeing, and the fine work she does is almost enough to
encourage one to relate the stories Lucy does. More likely, you'll just
want to pass along how Burstyn triumphs over a so-so script by giving an
excellent, truly memorable performance. You'll have plenty of those stories
to choose from.